Morning Class

Before Halloween madness took over our classroom, we brainstormed a list of things we wanted to learn about this year. On Monday we revisited this list to decided which topics would become our projects this year.

Each child was given two red dots to stick under the topics they were most enthusiastic about. Once we had all placed our votes (and then tallied these votes), we realized that we needed to eliminate some of the topics that had zero, one, or two votes.

So, the children were then given two blue dots and voted for the topics that had stars beside them: Pirates, Dinosaurs, Sports, Fairies, and Princesses. The children then counted the blue-dot votes: Pirates (3), Dinosaurs (9), Sports (3), Fairies (7), and Princesses (3).

We decided to start with dinosaurs as this topic got the highest number of votes. Over the past week we have been reading dinosaur stories and discussing what we know about dinosaurs.

We will soon begin talking about what we want to find out about dinosaurs and plan our project around the students' wonders. Stay tuned for updates on our project!

Afternoon Class

Unlike the morning class, no re-vote was needed here. The children cast their two votes for the topics they wanted to learn about and Camping (7), Pirates (4), and Sharks (3) received the large majority of the votes.

Although Camping got the highest number of votes, we know that people go camping in the spring and summer, not the winter, so we decided to save this project until a later date. We thought we could combine Sharks and Pirates and focus on this topic for our first project.

This week we have been reading pirate books and talking about what we know about pirates. These discussions led to the decision that we should have a day where we come to school dressed up as pirates! We will do this in January, as December always feels so busy and hectic.

The children have begun thinking about what they would like to learn about pirates over the upcoming months.